I've been writing Raising Steam fanfiction about Vimes and Vetinari. On fanfiction.net I've only posted three out of the seventeen-ish chapters I've plugged away at over Christmas.
I've got some problems though - I'm definitely not an engineering personality; I find blueprints boring, engines complicated, and trains themselves useful only. I am not a train enthusiast.
I read the book under the impression that the stoker works in a different section of the train to the driver in the cab, namely facing backwards and loading coal in with buckets. I was relying on Back To The Future: Part III with the Doc trying to get the locomotive over 88 mph with exploding colour bundles. The very slow fog scene in RS disrupted a lot of this and not in a good nostalgic way. I was waiting for the golems! To hold up the bridge, I mean, not magic.
On Youtube I saw this chappie cooking breakfast in his shovel to the right of the driver. So the driver and the stoker work in the same cab, just in front of the fender where the stoker shovels coal from. Yet in RS, Dick stays in the cab as an engineer, I think. Yet, the driver's mentioned without name once or twice.
So my question is: where is the engineer, where is the stoker (Vetinari), and where is the driver?
All these jobs are mentioned, and I have no idea where they are. I only started off writing about Vetinari cooking a fry-up breakfast for Vimes as mentioned. I'm now up to the boulders and the grags and writing from V/V POV without Moist. Because I was confused as ***k throughout the entire read. Unfortunately, I can write Blake, but I can't write Vetinari - he is appalling unless he's in character as the bl**dy spy he is in the book.
I think I know from RS what a footplate is, and also the guards van. I have no idea what type of early steam train that Pratchett is writing about. In Making Money he explains a mint somewhat, and how coins are made, and also in previous books, I'm used to him explaining about how to make footballs, spells, stamps, moving pictures, etc. There's not enough "chewy meat" in RS to fully explain what a train is, other than the personified thing on the very first page, which returns without complaint almost right at the end. Methinks he went the UA route a bit too strong. And no, it didn't make up for all the sexism.
If you don't wish to talk Raising Steam - and am I the only one that wished to have Raising Taxes for real - can anyone point me to a steam engine train website without blueprints, closeups of a firebox without positioning, the same youtube clip, pictures of a steam liner firebox, and everything that Terry Pratchett missed out on?
I've got some problems though - I'm definitely not an engineering personality; I find blueprints boring, engines complicated, and trains themselves useful only. I am not a train enthusiast.
I read the book under the impression that the stoker works in a different section of the train to the driver in the cab, namely facing backwards and loading coal in with buckets. I was relying on Back To The Future: Part III with the Doc trying to get the locomotive over 88 mph with exploding colour bundles. The very slow fog scene in RS disrupted a lot of this and not in a good nostalgic way. I was waiting for the golems! To hold up the bridge, I mean, not magic.
On Youtube I saw this chappie cooking breakfast in his shovel to the right of the driver. So the driver and the stoker work in the same cab, just in front of the fender where the stoker shovels coal from. Yet in RS, Dick stays in the cab as an engineer, I think. Yet, the driver's mentioned without name once or twice.
So my question is: where is the engineer, where is the stoker (Vetinari), and where is the driver?
All these jobs are mentioned, and I have no idea where they are. I only started off writing about Vetinari cooking a fry-up breakfast for Vimes as mentioned. I'm now up to the boulders and the grags and writing from V/V POV without Moist. Because I was confused as ***k throughout the entire read. Unfortunately, I can write Blake, but I can't write Vetinari - he is appalling unless he's in character as the bl**dy spy he is in the book.
I think I know from RS what a footplate is, and also the guards van. I have no idea what type of early steam train that Pratchett is writing about. In Making Money he explains a mint somewhat, and how coins are made, and also in previous books, I'm used to him explaining about how to make footballs, spells, stamps, moving pictures, etc. There's not enough "chewy meat" in RS to fully explain what a train is, other than the personified thing on the very first page, which returns without complaint almost right at the end. Methinks he went the UA route a bit too strong. And no, it didn't make up for all the sexism.
If you don't wish to talk Raising Steam - and am I the only one that wished to have Raising Taxes for real - can anyone point me to a steam engine train website without blueprints, closeups of a firebox without positioning, the same youtube clip, pictures of a steam liner firebox, and everything that Terry Pratchett missed out on?
